


Rewind

by mirroredsakura



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 02:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4373339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirroredsakura/pseuds/mirroredsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kyle Reese came back to 1984 with a prophecy of what was to come, he didn’t tell me that John Connor would be alone. He didn’t tell me that he would be hated, doubted, disbelieved. He didn’t tell me I might have to live that life for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rewind

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2010 for the now-defunct tscc_las round 1 challenge 4: [character] switches bodies with [character]

Sometimes things just happen by accident.

Sometimes you get so caught up running from one thing, you forget they’re not the only thing out there. You forget there are other people with their own plans, their own growing, evolving technology.

Sometimes the thing you’re running from is the only hope you have left.

I thought I knew the worst that could happen to me. To John. I thought I knew the worst mistake humanity could make.

I was wrong. 

*

The world that reappeared was hazy; blue-white smears of hospital lights and glowing screens. Sarah woke with her tongue sticking to the roof of her sandpapery mouth.

“John. John, hey, kid, wake up.” Derek’s voice was low, coaxing—gentle in a way Sarah hadn’t known his voice could be gentle. For one long moment, it was like having Kyle with her… Kyle whose murmuring breath ghosted across her skin, Kyle whose blunt fingers brushed the sweaty strands of hair off her forehead. For a moment, she closed her eyes and pretended.

“He’s coming to.”

The machine’s voice was like the slap of reality, the same way Reese’s had been a sheltering hand. Reality was John Conner and he had been… he was…  
What had happened?

It came back in pieces. Cameron’s nightly research, the CAT scans, suspicions of a brain tumor, men shouldering their way into the hospital waiting room where she and John… Then there had been all those lights… pain…

A series of rapid blinks helped clear the film from her vision, even as she felt her arms flop spasmodically when she tried to force them to move. Cameron’s impassive face was the first thing she saw clearly; the skin of her face half torn open in a series of small rips and tears.

“You’re awake.” Cameron’s hand—mercifully unharmed and whole—draped itself in a brief caress along the side of Sarah’s face. 

—Had the explosion rattled a few more bolts loose in that tin can of hers? Don’t you touch me, she thought frantically with a rising wave of distaste, her cracked lips working hard to shape the words. Your piss-poor intel was what got us into this mess in the first place—

Mercifully, Derek agreed on all accounts because the pressure against her face was jerked away. He didn’t even bother to hide the revulsion on his face as he dropped the machine’s hand as if it were days-old roadkill. “You’ve done your bit, get back up in front and drive this piece of junk.” 

“John—"

“I’ll watch ‘em both. Get moving.”

The loud grind of gears and corresponding lurch banged her arm against Derek’s. Her fingers, shuddering with the effort of lifting them, curled around the frayed cuffs of Derek’s sleeve and clenched tight. “Where is he?” she whispered, her voice a hoarse croak.

His face when he looked down at her was one of pure relief, “Machine dumped him out the back once we got you guys back. Don’t worry, no more shady brain docs for either of you.”

What? No… no, that wasn’t what she…

“John!” she whispered more insistently. He couldn’t be missing, could he? How long had she been out of commission?

The confusion in Derek’s face was punctuated by movement out of the corner of her eye. “Mom?”

Both of them jerked their eyes to where…

For a heart-stopping moment she thought the machines had finally found out her identity, had figured a way to take her face back to the future and copy it.

She could only watch, her death grip on Derek’s sleeve the only part of her that moved—and then only because it shook with the exertion. When she spoke, her desperation almost made her voice normal. “What happened? That’s not me. That’s not… not me.”

Later, she might feel ashamed at the shock, the mounting hysteria. Right now… right now she was looking at her own face, and hearing her own son’s raspy whisper issuing out of her—his—mouth.

*

On June 15, 2008, Sarah Gage checks into The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

On June 22, 2008, Sarah Gage disappears from her hospital bed after her chemotherapy treatment is pronounced unsuccessful. 

On June 23, 2008, an armed gunman identified as the same man wanted for an attack on a Los Angeles police station killing 39 armed policemen in 1984 broke into the Center and assaulted three hospital employees before leaving abruptly. 

On July 21, 2009, the FBI recovers the body of known felon Sarah Connor (a.k.a. Sarah Reese, Sarah Baum, Sarah Gage) at the scene of a disastrous gunfight in Pasadena’s Eisenhower Nursing Convalescent where a failed attempt to abduct one of the nurses led to police involvement. 

On April 19, 2011, the Skynet missile defense system goes online. The machine network declares war on mankind and triggers a nuclear apocalypse two days later.

In November 2027, John Connor’s established Resistance recovers stolen time-displacement equipment designed and built by the machines. A single scrubbed Terminator agent is sent through back in time, spurring rising controversy with the Resistance leader’s methods.

He was quoted as saying, “She needs to make this right.” No explanation was forthcoming as to what he meant by these words.

*

I never knew what sort of life I was preparing my son for. 

I knew he was the key, the cornerstone in the fight against the machines, and the one that would bring them victory.

I didn’t know because I didn’t live to know it. When Kyle Reese came back to 1984 with a prophecy of what was to come, he didn’t tell me that John Connor would be alone. He didn’t tell me that he would be hated, doubted, disbelieved.

He didn’t tell me I might have to live that life for him.

So I sent her back. I have to make her try again.

John Connor is the savior of mankind.

John Connor.

The real John Connor.

**Author's Note:**

> Essentially, the bunny consisted of the Connors et al getting mixed up with the brain-mapping tech from Dollhouse. I couldn't write that more explicitly into the fic because of the prompt restrictions, but if you're confused about the how and why, there we are.
> 
> Also note that the timeline of events is a little skewed in the matter of cancer treatments, I was pressed for time and didn't go into hardcore research mode. 
> 
> If the structure of this was a little too hard to get, I once made notes for one of my readers! 
> 
> \- shady non-Terminator organization comes up with brain tech (a la Dollhouse)  
> \- said shady organization starts kidnapping random patients from hospitals it's affiliated with  
> \- Cameron's super sleuthing skills come across hints of this and is convinced of shady Skynet doings  
> \- Sarah & John investigate/get kidnapped  
> \- organization messes around in their respective brainpans  
> \- Derek & Cameron make epic rescue mission  
> \- Sarah & John wake up as each other  
> \- John-that-is-Sarah gets cancer  
> \- checks into treatment center, checks out of treatment center, barely bypasses Arnold-mech sent for original mission to kill Sarah Connor  
> \- cancer gets worse, John-that-is-Sarah dies  
> \- Sarah is left to be John in the future  
> \- Sarah doesn't want to be John in the future  
> \- Sarah sends Cameron back to fix what needs fixing


End file.
